Fic: Fighting It

[embolalia]

Title: Fighting It
Pairing: Kara/Lee
Rating: R
Words: 1,969
Summary: Written for the_applecart prompt for fighting pilots "Someone hears the declarations to the stars."  What if that someone had been Sam? Angst and fluff within!

Fighting It

The sand under his head was hard and he was cold. Lee shivered as he sat up, reaching for his shirt. But then he realized where he was. Memory hit him and he grinned. Kara Thrace loved him. Being cold didn’t matter.

She was gone now but as Lee hurriedly pulled on the rest of his clothes, he couldn’t hold back the joy he still felt from last night. This was what Kara did: she panicked and ran and didn’t know what to do. But she loved him, and as long as he could find her he knew he could calm her down, could remind her that he loved her too. It would all be alright.


Lee trudged up the dunes toward the settlement, his head throbbing with the after-effects of alcohol and dehydration. As he wandered down the main thoroughfare, glancing around for Kara, he caught sight of his father.

“Morning, Dad,” he offered, approaching.

His father stared at him, smiling, for a moment too long. “Good morning, son. You missed all the excitement!”

Lee frowned, waiting to hear what she’d done now. “What happened?”

“Oh...” Bill trailed off, looking at the President in the distance.

“Dad?”

Bill nodded. “Kara and that ball player of hers had quite the fight. Knock-down, drag-out if you know what I mean.”

Lee fought back a grin. “I know how she can be.”

His father patted his shoulder, smiling tenderly into Lee’s face. “I know you do, son. I know.”

Lee squinted at his father, catching a faint scent of smoke on his clothes as he leaned in. Then he caught sight of a Raptor touching down in the distance and he sighed. “I have to go, Dad. I’ll see you later.”

His father pulled him into a long hug, then released him with a fond pat on the cheek.

Lee shook his head, bemused, and headed toward the shuttle.


“Hey, there!” Dee called out from the open hatch, and Lee’s stomach sank.

“Hey.” He walked toward her, forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other, to do the hard thing. At least Kara had already done it. That alone kept him moving forward.

“What is it?” Dee asked nervously, reading the tension in his face.

“Last night,” Lee started. “I had the chance to think--” He saw how guarded she looked and broke off. “I’m not sure you and I--”

“Right,” Dee interrupted, folding her arms across her chest. “This is about Kara, isn’t it?”

He blinked in alarm. He wanted to deny it, to avoid hurting her--but she’d find out soon enough. “Yeah,” Lee admitted. “We’ve just always...I’m sorry.”

Dee shook her head, not meeting his eyes. “I knew,” she said softly. “I always knew this would happen sooner or later.”

“I’m sorry,” Lee repeated.

She shrugged. “You can take the next shuttle,” she snapped. Slipping back through the hatch, she slammed it closed.

“Sure,” Lee said to the door. He jumped off the ramp with a sigh, raised a hand to wave to Dee as she took off. When he turned away, though, he felt lighter. Freer.


Lee headed back into the encampment, looking more purposefully for Kara. There hadn’t been another Raptor yet this morning, so she had to be somewhere. Finally he asked Chief, and the man rolled his eyes and jerked his thumb toward the med tent. Lee nodded ruefully to himself; he should have started there as soon as he heard about the fight.

He lifted the flap and ducked inside. Kara was perched on the edge of a table, a bruise on her cheek and a bandage on her temple. When she caught sight of Lee, she froze.

“Hey,” he said softly, coming to stand in front of her.

“Lee?” Kara asked nervously.

He laid his palm against the uninjured side of her face. “I just can’t let you go anywhere,” he teased. “Always getting in trouble.” He waited for her to laugh but she didn’t, just stared at him like she was waiting for him to strike her. “Kara?” he finally pressed.

She twisted away from his touch and jumped off the table. “You shouldn’t waste your time with me,” she said tightly. “I’m more trouble than it’s worth.”

“Hey.” Lee grabbed her arm. “I know it’s hard, hurting someone else. Dee’s face just now...I feel horrible about it. And I know you didn’t want to do that to Sam. But it’s for the best.”

Kara blinked up at him, emotions shifting across her face faster than he could make sense of them. “I mean it,” she finally said. “You should leave me the frak alone.” She jerked her arm away and slipped out of the tent.

Lee stood frozen, bewildered, for a long moment. Just when he thought he knew all the moods of Kara Thrace, there was a new one. He shook his head, trying to reconcile this version of her with the woman whom he’d made love to last night, the woman who laughed naked under the stars.

After a long minute Lee followed her out of the tent, determined to make sense of whatever was going through Kara’s head.

She was already out of sight. He squared his shoulders and chose a path at random.


A few meters past the med tent, Lee reached a makeshift pyramid court. In the middle was Sam, hurling a ball at a goal, his face and arms still bearing the fresh signs of a fight.

Lee turned to leave, but Sam saw him first and threw the ball down, stalking toward Lee with anger in his eyes.

“Look,” Lee started, trying to imagine how Sam must feel. “I know what it’s like to love Kara. And I know she never meant to hurt you--”

Sam snorted as he reached Lee, laughed wildly. “You can have her,” Sam growled. His breath reeked of alcohol.

Lee smiled tightly, relieved that at least the other man wasn’t still in a violent mood.

“If you still want her,” Sam added.

Lee took a step back, confused. “What?”

“I heard you last night. Both of you, screaming like banshees. Kara Thrace loves Lee Adama. Nobody on the planet could sleep through that.”

“I’m sorry.” He was, too.

“So then, this morning.” Sam waved a hand vaguely toward the other end of the camp, his gesture betraying how drunk he was. “She wakes me up. Asks me to frakking marry her. Right then and there this morning.”

The story continued, Sam recounting Kara’s words, then his own, then their fight, but all Lee could hear was a dull rushing in his ears. All he could feel was the ground falling away from under him.

“Frakking bitch,” Sam muttered. There was a hint of a sob behind the words, and Lee felt an answering ache. “She’s all yours.”


Lee wandered off, feeling like he’d been kicked in the chest, like he couldn’t breathe. She’d proposed to Sam. She had told him she loved him and held on to him like she’d never let go and they’d had the most incredible sex...and then she’d proposed to Sam.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t expected Kara to run, but to try to cut off any possible future for them so completely...Lee was glad he hadn’t found her. He didn’t even want to anymore, couldn’t imagine what he’d say. It took all the energy he had just to keep walking. Because he kept coming back to one idea: she hadn’t meant it. She didn’t love him.

And then there she was. He rounded a corner and Kara was looking at him, terrified.

In an instant Lee’s pain ignited into rage. “What the frak?” he demanded.

Her face closed off. “I told you to leave me alone, Lee.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her hard, demanding her eyes. “What the FRAK, Kara!”

She shoved him away, her eyes darkening. “It was one night, Lee.”

“You said you loved me. You said you wanted me to upset the frakking applecart, Kara. YOU DID!” He pressed forward, backing Kara into the side of a building.

“What was I supposed to say, Lee?” she evaded, spitting the words at him.

“Anything. Else.” He planted his hands on the wall on either side of her head and growled into her face.

Kara put her hands on her hips, not intimidated. “I meant it before. You should stay the hell away from me.”

Lee’s hands dropped away, but he stood his ground, shaking his head. “I meant every word Kara,” he said, anger burning in him with the heat of a banked fire. “And I really thought you did, too.”

Her face fell then; for a moment Lee thought she was going to cry. Kara shook her head. “I woke up this morning...Tigh said...”

His eyes narrowed. “Said what?”

“That it’s about survival instinct.”

Lee frowned in agitation. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Kara swallowed, shifting, still trapped between his body and the wall. “The Cylons will be back, Lee. Sooner or later.”

He shrugged. “And until then you wanted Sam?”

“Dammit, Lee!” She was clearly fighting back the words. Her eyes snapped to his. “If I love you, that means that sooner or later I get to watch you die. Or you watch me die. And if we love each other like that, last night--like screaming vows to the Gods--how the frak could we ever survive that?! Either of us?”

The heat of his fury went out as he finally saw Kara’s twisted logic. Slowly Lee reached out, wrapped his arms around her and closed the last few inches between them. “Kara,” he said slowly, surely. He pulled back enough to meet her eyes. “You could marry Sam, I could marry Dee, the Cylons could destroy this planet and Earth besides, and I would never stop loving you like that. Never. There’s no use fighting it. Do you hear me?”

Her eyes were wide, somewhere between fear and awe, but she nodded. And after a moment, she answered. “I know,” she whispered. “Me, too.”

Lee kissed her, sealing his vow.

After a moment Kara shuddered in his arms and reached up, pulling him tighter against her as she opened her lips under his. Lee’s tongue thrust into her mouth, heat rising between them. He thanked the Gods she believed in that they’d ended up against one of the few permanent structures as he pressed her into the wall. Kara reached for him urgently, her hands tearing at his buttons.

Lee groaned and rocked against her, already hard between her thighs, savored Kara’s answering whimper. He grinned against her lips and reached for the edge of her shirt.

All the anger and hurt of the morning were forgotten as they pulled off the rest of their clothes and came together, stroking and thrusting and holding on as hard as they could.

“I love you,” Kara gasped as she came, her legs locked around Lee’s waist as he drove into her.

He shuddered at the words, lost himself in pleasure.


They walked through the camp, hand in hand. For all the trials of the day, Lee couldn’t stop grinning.

Kara stopped in front of the oracle’s tent, pulling Lee to a halt as well.

“What is it?” he asked gently.

She bit her lip nervously, then glanced inside. “What if we...what if we got married? Then at least as long as we were alive, we’d always be...each other’s.” Kara waited anxiously for him to answer.

Lee pulled her against him, pressing a kiss to her lips.

“So that’s a yes?” Kara teased when she caught her breath again.

“Yeah.” He spun her around, delighted in the way her eyes lit up. “Yes.”